


Ashes and Dust

by SailorSol



Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Gen, Loss, Possession, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-11
Updated: 2014-04-11
Packaged: 2018-01-18 23:46:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1447387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SailorSol/pseuds/SailorSol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“She gets it now, what Howard meant about love, but with the Barn destroyed and Howard dead, there’s no way to fix this anymore.”</p>
<p>AU from “The New Girl”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes and Dust

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Hagar for the beta.

She’s taking a risk, betting that the Crocker Curse will overcome whatever Tyler has done to Duke, so that when Tyler-in-Duke’s-body swings the fire axe down, it will be Tyler who dies, losing his ability to body-hop.

The thunk of the axe is nauseating, and she waits, holding her breath, to see who is looking back at her when silver eyes melt back to brown. Duke’s mouth curls into a lazy smile, and that’s when she knows her plan didn’t work; Duke would never smile like that after killing one of the Troubled.

“Duke?” she tries anyway. Duke—or is it Tyler?—is looking at the axe in his hands, flexing his fingers, darting glances towards the body on the stretcher as blood pools out onto the white sheets.

“Well that was… unexpected.”

It’s Duke’s voice, but the cadence is wrong, and Audrey uses his distraction to pull her gun. He finally looks at her, and his grin stretches, and the face looks like Duke’s, those are his eyes and his smile, but it’s not him, and she can’t stop herself from shivering.

“I can have some fun with this,” not-Duke says, hefting the axe. He’s giving her an assessing look, but Audrey knows he’s still just a teenager stuck in an adult’s body, doesn’t know jack shit about Audrey or what she’s capable of doing.

“I’m sorry,” she says, the words aimed at Duke, who is gone now, and maybe at Tyler, because she couldn’t do anything to help him either. She doesn’t hesitate as she raises the gun and fires, two in the chest and one in the head just as she remembers from the FBI training she never went through.

Her eyes are dry as she heads outside, hiding behind Lexie because it’s easier that way, hurts less to pretend to be the woman who barely knew Duke, who doesn’t care about the look of hope on Nathan’s face that starts to crumple as she walks out alone.

“Duke?” he asks her, and she can only shake her head, and then Nathan is running inside like he can stop his whole world from ending. She doesn’t follow him, knowing it’s too late; she doesn’t stay at the hospital, because she won’t be able to lie to him when he comes outside with hollow, empty eyes.

She gets it now, what Howard meant about love, but with the Barn destroyed and Howard dead, there’s no way to fix this anymore. Nathan is still alive, but she may as well have put a bullet through him when she let Tyler kill Duke, and she aches inside in a way she knows she never has before, not as Audrey, not as Lucy or Sarah or the dozen other women she’s been.

She’ll have to tell Nathan the truth, she knows; he deserves to know that it was her, and not Lexie, who let Duke die. She doesn’t expect forgiveness, not for this particular betrayal, but that is the pain of love, the pain that Howard had been trying to teach her for generation upon generation.

She doesn’t cry.

(When she goes to Nathan the next day and admits that she has been Audrey all along, he draws his gun and wraps her hands around it and presses the barrel against his chest. His eyes are fever bright as he tells her to kill him, to end the Troubles once and for all. She wants to tell him no, wants to keep him for herself, but she knows Nathan and can see that he’s in that same place the Chief—his father—was, that day on the beach.

“I love you,” she tells him. He doesn’t have the chance to reply before she pulls the trigger, pressing one last kiss to his lips as the light fades from his eyes.)

(She still doesn’t cry.)


End file.
